EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A PRESTRESSED TROUGH BRIDGE FOR HIGH SPEED RAILWAY

In this paper, the dynamic field experiments on the Antoing Bridge located on the high speed railway line between Paris and Brussels are introduced. The experiments were cooperatively carried out by the Northern Jiaotong University from China, the Catholic University of Leuven, the Free University of Brussels and the Belgium Railway Company SNCB from Belgium. The bridge is composed of multi-span simply supported prestressed concrete girders with the span of 50m and the U-shaped sections. The loads are the high speed Thalys trains with articulated vehicles. The speeds of the Thalys trains were between 265-310km/h. In the experiments, the dynamic responses of the bridge such as the deflections, the accelerations and the strains were measured by LVDT, accelerometers and strain gauges, respectively. Many useful results have been obtained from the analysis of the recorded data. The tests and the measured results are of reference value for the study and design of high speed railway bridges.